Past Faceoffs

Rosters

Astralis

SK Gaming

Predictions

This match is really tricky, both teams have two maps they probably don’t want to play, SK Gaming never play cache so it will be their first ban, and I’m pretty sure they don’t want to play nuke either, it’s been a terrible map for them lately. Astralis however don’t play on cobble so that’s their first ban for sure, train is also a map they should avoid as SK Gaming is the best train team in the world, and their record on it is just insane.

So let’s just assume that we will have nuke and train as the first two maps, the next bans are almost impossible to predict, both teams are extremely good on dust2, overpass and mirage, so no matter which one we’ll see, it’s going to be hard to call, but I’m pretty sure SK Gaming don’t want to play on overpass against Astralis because of their recent loss, so it should be either dust2 or mirage.

I think we will see nuke, train and dust2 here, train should be a straight up win for SK Gaming, so that should give them a big advantage, nuke is tricky, it should be like 60-40 for Astralis, and dust2 is basically 50/50, but with train in the pool, I’d say SK Gaming should be the winning team here, they would basically start with a 1-0 lead if it was the first map. So SK Gaming is my pick, but as usual – small bet because it’s freaking risky.

Conclusion

This is a super tricky one. Of course in recent history you can easily go with SK here and say they’ll take it however honestly I do not think you can sleep on Astralis here…..well I mean it is the semi-final and Astralis past the Semi’s? That’s a big LUL 😛 For those who don’t get the meme, Astralis historically have had a very rough time of choking in the semi-finals. Astralis since the appointment of Gla1ve have had some shaky performances however from what I am seeing and just knowing the roster I think they have a lot of potential and they have been showing improvements while SK on the otherhand have dropped quite a bit down from the times of them being the world’s best team. SK were dominant on the 2nd two maps versus G2 yesterday however for the past while they just have been rather shaly and I’m not entirely convinced with them. If I was a bettor I honestly would not bet on this and just appreciate the match however I gotta favor SK here. SK for me are simply for now at least the more proven and stable team and I can’t really yet favor Astralis over them. 55-45 SK

Interesting game here. Thinking about the veto, I think astralis can pick a number of maps to remove. They in the past have been removing Cobble or Overpass, but could even risk it here and remove Train. I do think they will most likely go for Cobble though, as although SK have had poor results on Cobble for the most part recently, they did really well on it against NiP. So we should then see Nuke and Train as the 2 maps. This then leaves Overpass, D2 and Mirage. From these 3 maps, I think overpass is pretty 50-50, regardless of the score the other day. D2 I would favour SK on a bit as they look really strong on it, and Mirage I would favour astralis on a touch. I do think that SK has the edge in this game, but a LOW bet on ast to take 1 map makes sense. Thinking about the veto and the odds, I don’t think you can really go on SK at these odds. Again the veto will be important, so if the veto is good for SK, I will edit my bet.